Post Aerosols Conclusion

Aerosols do effect climate change through the urban heat island effect and greenhouse gases. Aerosols determine how much light gets through to the surface and when more get through and it is in an urban area the heat will get trapped in the area by greenhouse gases and make the area way hotter than it should be.

Surface Mining

There are three types of surface mining: strip mining, contour mining, and mountaintop mining.



Strip mining is when machines and explosives remove a few layers of land that is covering the source of coal. The debris is dumped in an area close to the mining area. This is a quick easy way of mining, but is very destructive. This damages the area and hurts animals and water sources.



Contour mining is done when the seam to the coal is one a slope of a hill and you need to remove overburden to get to it. This is good if you need to get to the seam, but it can lead to landslides since the overburden removed is usually piled up in front of the mining site.



Mountaintop removal mining is what it sounds like. It is removing the tops of mountains and hills with explosives to get to seams for coal mining. It is a very quick method of retrieving coal, but is absolutely awful for the land. The overburden removed from the explosion is placed in valleys by the mountain which hurts animal environments, causes floods, and pollutes water streams.

Underground Mining

There are five types of underground mining: drift mining, shaft mining, room & pillar mining, continuous mining, & long wall mining.

Drift mining is when the mine enters a seam that intersects the surface and goes at a horizontal direction following coal. This is an easy cheap way to mine; but, It can only be done when the situation is right to do so and there is a good chance of roof collapses.



Shaft mining is when an elevator provides access to the mine and an elevator provides a away for the coal to come out. This is good to get all the coal you need, but they can get very deep. This is bad for water and the hot temperatures you can get from being so deep



Room & pillar mining is when pillars of coal keep the roof up for miners to mine the rest of the coal leaving half of the coal behind.



 Continuous mining is when a miner operates a continuous mining machine to mine the coal. This is a highly efficient way to mine.



 Long wall mining is the most efficient mining technique. It is when huge mining machines support the roof with hydraulics and once the coal is removed, the machine retreats leaving behind the coal.

coal formation

Coal is basically old dead plants. 300-400 million years ago some dead plants fell into a swamp and started to become buried in the swamp. With the absence of oxygen the dead plants began to form peat rather than just rot away. Through time, heat and pressure the peat turns to lignite, the lignite turns to bituminous coal, and the bituminous coal turns to anthracite coal. From one stage to another the carbon concentration and heat value continues to go up.